poor americans are at the mercy of the right-wing governors who want to go after the health care funds. those with preexisting conditions, well, you're just out of luck. if you're under 26, too bad. nothing for you. can't afford medicine? tough luck. it's america. maybe governor romney didn't look like an outsourcer on the stage last week, but that's a big part of how he made his millions. workers are at the mercy of business owners. teachers are at the mercy of administrators. romney will deregulate water, air, the workplace, food, oil, banks, wall street, he told us that he wants to get rid of teachers, cops, firefighters or what he calls government workers. that's mitt romney's america. george w. bush's policies on steroids. now ask yourself the question, americans. can you get fooled again? we're a month away.

think about it. that's "the ed show." i'm ed shultz. the "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening. >> good evening, everybody. thank you for staying with us this hour. there was this moment in 2008 on election night that year. i know you were watching our coverage here on msnbc, but on election night in 2008 over on the fox news channel, carl rove in the middle of fox's election night coverage was on tv gaming out john mccain's chances of pulling out a win that night. he said during their election coverage, quote, if senator mccain loses ohio he goes from 286 electoral votes, which the republicans carried in '04, down to 266 and that puts him below the 270 needed to win the white house. he'd not only need to sweep the rest of the states, which were won by republicans in '04, he'd need to pick up something as well. at that exact moment as carl was

saying on fox news as part of their coverage that john mccain basically had to win ohio or else, while carl rove was saying that live on fox, fox got word that the state of ohio had not, in fact, been won by john mccain. it was won by barack obama. mr. rove was right that night. that was game over for john mccain. by winning the great state of ohio, barack obama won the presidency. mr. obama closed off john mccain's path to the white house by taking that one giantly-important swing state and it was all over. in presidential politics ohio is a must-win. for republicans, winning ohio, it doesn't guarantee you will win the white house, it's not enough just to win ohio, obviously, but it is necessary to win ohio. if you lose that state, you will lose the presidency. it is the hinge, it is the glue for every republican presidential campaign in modern american history.

losing ohio has meant losing the white house. in 2004 the democratic candidate john kerry, he did not concede on election night. john kerry and john edwards were waiting on results from ohio. when ohio went to president bush, the next day, the day after election night, that is when that race was over but not a minute before. ohio is that important in modern presidential politics. both the romney and the obama campaigns are out stumping tonight. mitt romney and president obama have 50 possible states to fight over. they have nine or so swing states that seem to actually be in play. tonight mitt romney and barack obama are both in just one state. mr. romney appearing with chris christie and rob portman in akron, ohio. the president showing up with will.i.am. >> buckeyes, we need you. we need you fired up.

>> ohio is going to elect me the next president of the united states. >> all the interest in competing in ohio, the desperate need to win the election in ohio, the dualing rallies and the ground games, all that comes from the context of a big surprising decision in ohio this afternoon. about how the election is going to be run there this year. back in 2004, the night that the democratic ticket decided not to concede the race on election night because they were waiting on results. part of what was happening in '04 was this. these horrendous epic lines for ohio voters. they waited ten hours and more in ohio in 2004 to cast a vote. especially in precincts used heavily by african-americans and college students. the polls were not ready for everyone who wanted to vote. for voters likely to vote democratic, casting a ballot meant waiting all day and into the night in hallways and in the rain. if you decided to stick it out.

maybe you didn't. or maybe you couldn't decide to stick it out and that line is why your vote never got counted that year. after that '04 election, congress issued a special report about what had gone so wrong in ohio. and ohio responded. ohio made voting easier. the state of ohio expanded early voting starting the next year. starting in 2005. every single ohio election since then including the primary this year, ohio has offered this expanded early in-person voting. the new system seems to be working just fine. but now just in time for this election, specifically ohio republicans have been trying to cut early voting back to go back to the old system, the way it was in '04 with the ten-hour lines. if they handle it it in every election, then ohio republicans cannot stop the counties from just using that same system just

in time for this election this year. ohio's republican secretary of state today said that he's going to appeal that decision. he's going to appeal it all the way up to the u.s. supreme court. he's so desperate to shut off early voting in this election, to go back to the ten-hour lines from '04, he's so desperate to do that, he's bypassing the next level of review and is going right to the u.s. supreme court. the practical result is that nobody knows how the election will be run now in the crucial swing state of ohio. as of right now, no one knows yet how the election is going e to be run there, when you will be allowed to vote. if it's going to be like the last seven years or back to the bad old days. we don't know how the election is going to be run and we're four weeks out from election night. today is the last day to register e to vote in ohio before the election along with all these other states. today is the last day to register.

but in ohio republicans are going to fight down to the wire to stop ohio voters from being able to early vote in the last few days before the election, which i should tell you is when 100,000 people voted in ohio last time. more than a third of the overall margin of victory by which president obama won that state in 2008 were votes cast in the last 30 days. the chairman of the republican party in the county where columbus is, he said he didn't have an interest in, quote, accommodating the urban-read african-american vote in ohio. he's the one who said read african-american. i didn't insert that there. he's not only the chairman, he's on the county election board for the columbus area. he will be running the elections there. all the while, resenting the african-american turnout machine. in the city of cleveland, ohio, african-american voters are 26 times more likely than white

voters to use early in-person voting as their preferred way of voting. for this election in particular, even though it's been fine for the last seven years, for this election, early voting must be stopped. to the point of taking it to the supreme court of the united states with 28 days left before the election and meanwhile leaving the whole state's voting rules hanging. as ohio hits its voter registration deadline today and so many other states as well, what we know about how the parties have done on voter registration in the swing states opens a real interesting window into how the two parties are contesting the important states. this is a matter not just of national but of international importance. you can tell because the guardian newspaper from the uk has published a deep look into. swing state voter registration numbers this past week. you can see their headline here. democrats struggle to repeat 2008 voter surge despite registration push. in swing state florida where

republicans pass new rules making it harder to register people to vote before those got blocked by the courts, they were in place for a long time, and you can see e the results. new democratic registrations are a quarter of what they were in '08. republicans in florida have registered about as many as the last time. in swing state iowa, another example, the number of registered republicans has grown by about the same amount in this election season as the last. but the number of democrats in iowa has dropped by a jaw-rattling 45,000-plus. the democratic party is missing more than 45,000 o voters as compared to 2008. if found wandering e please return to big bird. where did they go? were they purged from the roles? did they move to another state? change to being independent or republicans? we do not know. just as we do not know yet how the final registration numbers are going to shake out.

it's a mystery. a how things stand now, four weeks before election night is this. gallup's daily tracking poll has president obama up by 3 points among registered voters. among the smaller group of people who are likely voters, not just registered but likely to vote, president obama is not leading. it's romney leading by 2 points. the pew research center has a similar poll. romney up by 4 points in the pew poll. in the swing states, mr. romney leading in colorado by 4. mr. obama leading in pennsylvania by 2, the right poll showing a tie in nevada. the president up in new hampshire by 6 points. and really the one poll we waited on all day, the one poll that might matter more than any other single piece of data, the one piece we got today, president obama holding on to a 4-point lead in ohio. let's poll this one out.

this is a cnn number from this afternoon. barack obama with an edge of 4 points in ohio, which is just outside the margin of error. it's far less than the 9-point leads in the survey not long ago. i should say to democrats and obama supporters, i'm sorry if i unleashed those numbers on you with a mature content warning label. but my friend e.j. dionne will be with us later. he says, i was talking with an old friend who was one of the nonpartisan polling outfits. we were discussing the large shifts in some of the polls on the presidential election and the feedback he receives whenever he puts out new numbers that make one side or the other unhappy. he offered an observation so priceless it needs to be shared. he said "when you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you. when you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill

themselves." whatever your persuasion, let that be a med fore for you and also maybe a lesson. information is always your friend. joining us now is nate silver, the founder and editor of the 538 blog. everybody reading books right now is reading this. congratulations on the book. thank you for being here. >> thank you, rachel. >> you tweeted this afternoon we might be in the middle of one of the largest one-day swings in the polls all year. did it work out that way? >> today we had 15 or 20 polls between national polls and state polls, although there were a few isolated good numbers for obama. it's becoming more and more clear that romney got a big bounce from his convention, probably a 3-point bounce. >> so you mean to sigh he got a big bounce from his debate

performance compared to president obama from the convention? >> that's right. the good month that obama had had between the convention and the 47% tape, you're now seeing the race as close as it's been all year. i'm a little skeptical it's tied now based on the fact that obama still seems to have a lead in the majority of swing state polls that we have seen. but romney who looked like his campaign might be dead in the water, now it's very close. maybe the debate was the october surprise. although it wouldn't be the first time a challenger did well in the first televised debate. >> what about the size and the speed of the swings that you're seeing right now? what can you tell us about the volatility in the race compared to previous elections? >> there's a lot of disagreement on the turnout model. the gallup poll has 5 points better. others have that smaller. so it seems like obama would

even today win an election if everyone registered to vote turned out or certainly all adults. but based on the republican enthusiasm advantage and some democrats feeling a little disupon dend after the performance in denver last week, that alone might be enough to push romney over the top. >> the special way that you sort of distill the candidate's chances at 538, your now cast puts in economic data and other measu measures that give you a percentage chance that one of the two candidates will win the election. what's the percentage chance you have for each of the candidates and has that changed less than the national polls changed? >> the percentage is a 70/30 advantage for obama. if you go to vegas, you can bet at about those odds. obama is a 70% favorite. but my site had obama as an 85%

favorite before the debate. means romney has gone double. people maybe read a little too much into the national polls. but even in the cases where obama was ahead by 7 points in the state before, that lead has been cut to 3 or 4. maybe you have a tie now. or romney ahead. there's a sign that obama's problems were worse just after the debate on thursday and friday and it's perking back up. we'll see in the next round show the swing states tied. then democrats really will be appropriate for them to panic a little bit. right now trepidation is the most appropriate emotion for democrats. if you see e obama's lead in the swing states evaporating as well, then it really is, i think, a toss up heading into the last debates. >> nate silver, author of the

new book "the signal and the noise." more broadly it's about the whole statistical universe and how to understand it. nate, congratulations. thanks for your time tonight. >> thank you. pop quiz. paul ryan has either, a, just helped president obama with the nra, or b, just destroyed president obama with the nra, or c, could he have done both? that's next.

the campaign has lots of references to big bird in it. big bird. like every day. every hour. but today i think it's possible that the campaign veered from mentions of big bird to what i think might have been a reference to elmo and the o.j. simpson case. that's coming up. mike rowe here at a ford tell me fiona, who's having a big tire event?

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before the vice presidential debate, paul ryan has been in michigan. now conservative activist kid rock introduced paul ryan at a rally in rochester, michigan, yesterday. i think we have a shot of them hugging it out. there we go. this was paul ryan's second trip to the state of michigan as the vice presidential nominee. even though mitt romney, the guy at the top of the republican ticket has not visited michigan since august and the republican party has yet to run a single ad in michigan, at this rally paul ryan was very enthusiastic and very optimistic about his republican side's chances.

>> it's getting closer in michigan. you can help push us over the top. you can deliver this. we can do it here. >> if that was the high point of paul ryan's day in michigan, the low point definitely came earlier that same day in an interview with an award-winning local report from flint, michigan. terry camp, and mr. camp introduced his interview like this. >> i wanted to ask him about the gun violence in our cities. let's listen. this did not end well. >> gun violence and gun policy have not been big issues in the presidential campaign thus far and that probably makes sense. the president's record is signing a bill that allowed people to carry guns in national parks and another allowing people to carry guns on amtrak. which might come in handy when you decide to go hunting in the quiet car. it's not been a policy focus of this it president. and because of that, it's not

been contested ground in the presidential race thus far. despite that, though, this reporter really wanted to ask paul ryan about gun violence. and it makes sense. last year flint, michigan, was ranked the most violent city in the united states of america. today 70 miles south in detroit, police staged a rally telling people to enter of detroit at their own risk. police saying they are understaffed, underpaid and the police are in fear for their lives because of the city's crime problems. this reporter sitting down with the vice presidential nominee decided to ask paul ryan about whether or not the country has a gun problem. as the reporter said, it did not go well. >> does this country have a gun problem? >> this country has a crime problem. >> not a gun problem? >> no. if you take a look at the gun laws we have, i don't even think president obama is proposing more gun laws. we have to make sure we enforce

our laws. we have laws that aren't being properly enforced. but the best thing to help prevent violent crime in inner cities is to bring opportunity in inner cities. is to help teach people good discipline, good character. that is civil society. that's what charities and churches do to help one another make sure they can realize the value in one another. >> you can do that by cutting taxes? >> those are your words, not mine. >> thank you very much, sir. >> that was kind of strange. trying to stuff words in people's mouths? >> it it sounds like you're -- >> ryan folks putting the paper in front of the camera and everything. vice presidential nominee paul ryan getting annoyed in this interview with terry camp in flint, michigan. the campaign even after the interview was over still went out of their way to trash the reporter that paul ryan walked

out of that interview on. the campaign given on the record quotes calling the reporter an embarrassment. the city where that reporter works and where that interview took place does have the worst violent crime rate in the nation. so that line of questioning here for mr. ryan was understandable. maybe even predictable. but beyond the newsworthiness of paul ryan getting up and taking off his microphone and ending the interview and beyond the newsworthiness of the campaign going after this reporter, there was what that reporter was able to elicit from paul ryan. there's his prescription for what it takes to get out of poverty if you live in the inner city. >> the best thing to help prevent violent crime in the inner cities is to bring opportunity in the inner cities, help people get out of poverty, help teach people good discipline, good character. >> are all people who are poor only poor because they have not

been taught good character? or only poor people in the inner cities who are poor because they don't have good character? they don't have good discipline, they need to be taught that. you watching at home, do you not make a lot of money? was there a time you didn't have a lot of money? is that because you have bad character? if i were the romney/ryan campaign i would probably try to trash that reporter too. but that wasn't all that happened here. >> if you take a look at the gun laws we have, i don't think president obama is proposing more gun laws. we have strong gun laws. >> that's news too. it's especially news in light of the fact that it the nra is currently running these ads in a bunch of swing states. it's a huge ad buy too. they say chipping away at your right, chipping away at your freedom. now they are attacking our second amendment rights. you can stop them right now. defend freedom. defeat obama. that's what the ads say.

but then there's paul ryan, the republican vice presidential nominee saying president obama is not proposing any attack on gun rights. he's not proposing anymore gun laws. that's true. the only gun-related changes in law we have had from president obama have been expansions of gun rights. but the republicans are not supposed to admit that. not when the nra is running this scary ad campaign saying otherwise. and not when the republicans own candidate has a gun rights record that's so schizophrenic it makes his policies on abortion look like a model of consistency. this is the weapons ban that mitt romney signed as governor. the nra doesn't mind that because they are too busy endorsing this gun banning guy over the other guy who has done no such thing but who happens to be a democrat. so it is remarkable that the vice presidential nominee of the republican party stormed out of this interview in michigan this

week. but him storming out does not seem to have been because of the question about cutting taxes or this reporter embarrassing himself, which is the way the campaign tried to put it. this reporter from flint, michigan, this reporter has nothing to be embarrassed about. he got two scoops here. after he got paul ryan to admit he thinks poor people are poor because they have bad character and teaching poor people to have better character is how they can get out of poverty and after he got him to admit that president obama is not taking away anyone's guns despite all of the republican campaigning to the contrary right this second, with those scoops, i mean, isn't it possible that the campaign pulled the plug because they were worried this interview was going to keep making this kind of news? to make any day a special occasion. new mini cream pies for one. real whip cream and a cookie-crumb crust. marie callender's. it's time to savor. real whip cream and a cookie-crumb crust. those little things for you, life's about her. but your erectile dysfunction -

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yesterday a british stem cell researcher won the nobel prize in medicine. it's the a pex of international recognition and honor for your work. sometimes it's also a chance to get back at that high school teacher who said you would never make it. who you have been holding a grudge against ever since for 60 years. >> the main gist of it was that he heard that gurdon was interested in doing science and that this was a completely ridiculous idea because there was no hope whatever of my doing science and any time spent on it would be a total waste of time, both on my part and the part of the person having to teach him.

so that terminated my science at school. >> he wins a nobel prize in medicine, but his high school teacher says he shouldn't bother with science. this is science. he's also now provided a picture of his school report card from 1949, which reads in part, quote, his work has been far from satisfactory. several times he's been in trouble because he will not listen but will insist on doing his work in his own way. i believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist is. this is quite ridiculous. it would be a shear waste of time both on his part and those who have to teach him. then he becomes the first scientistist ever to clone an animal. and that report card is now the picture in the dictionary next to the word pown. stories about people who are bad at science do not always end

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it's probably the single most iconic piece of political campaign imagery in the last generation. the barack obama hope poster. this famous hope poster was created by the artist shepard ferry during the '08 presidential campaign. he got into some legal trouble for that poster when the associated press got assertive about the original copyright on the photo that they said was the basis for the image. even though the image cost him headaches, what he created with that photo will go down in the history books as one of the most memorable pieces of political art ever. and that hope poster became a generic treatment that you could do to anything. you can go to the apple itunes store and download the app for your iphone that will hope-posterize whatever you want. it's a photo filter.

so it was probably inevitable that earlier this year when paul ryan was tapped by mitt romney to be his vice presidential nominee, somebody immediately launched a poster of paul ryan in the look of the '08 obama hope poster. except underneath paul ryan it did the d not say "hope." it said "math." it's kind of genius. we understand the emotional importance of your hope thing, but we don't need that soft thing as a country. we need math. if you know nothing else about the republican said, this is the thing they want you to know. they want you to think we need math. e we need hard-nosed, practical numbers. this is a tech democratic need. it's cutting spending. let's get real about cutting spending. let's get real then e. last night we started talking

about this startling new graph that was published on the website of foreign policy magazine. the blue line shows what we have been spending on our military overtime. over the last 60 years, our military spending has spiked during times of conflict. during the korean war, vietnam war, arms race build up for the cold war, and the war on terror over the last decade. this does not include spending for the wars in iraq and afghanistan specifically because that was done as emergency spending. this is just the base military budget. but minus those two big wars, the blue line is where u.s. military spending is right now. the obama plan, what the president has campaigned on is to have military spending go like this. he would maintain our current level of defense spending over the next eight years. he would spend way more than a cold war-style drawdown.

way more than the sequester, but he would treat the budget as the new normal with slight increases over time. that's the obama plan for the biggest single thing on which we spend discretionary money. mr. obama's opponents, on the other hand, the math ticket, the hard-nosed practical numbers guys, their plan for defense spending looks like this. ta da! that's what mitt romney is proposing for military spending. an otherwise enormous amount of money. this is what they are planning on doing. the highest level of military spending since the korean war. because, you know, forget your hope and change. what the country needs is math, math, math. how does the ticket plan to balance this giant plus sign n contained in their plan? this massive increase in government spending. where does the minus come from if they want to increase spending by that much?

this was the scene today in a place called van meter, iowa. this is what greeted mitt romney today as he campaigned. fight big banks, not big bird. 99% of cookies are e eaten by 1% of monsters. make wall street pay, not sesame striet. members of an iowa citizens group dressed in sesame street costumes. they were there to laugh at his suggestion that his plan to cut the deficit is to cut off funding for pbs. this has become a full-fledged thing in the campaign now. the obama campaign today releasing this 30-second ad specifically on the issue of big bird. it's a sarcastic ad hitting mitt romney for being tough enough to take on this yellow-feathered fellow. and president obama has now fully incorporated the big bird line into his stump speech. >> for all you moms and kids out there, you should have

confidence that finally somebody is cracking down on big bird. elmo has been seen in a white suburban. he's driving for the border. oscar is hiding out in his trash can. we're cracking down on um. g governor romney's plan is to let wall street run wild again, but he's going to bring the hammer down on "sesame street." >> president obama now having lots of fun with this out on the campaign trail. but as a policy matter, it's sort of a serious thing. when mr. romney was asked during the debate how he would make the math work, he wants to be seen as the math ticket, how would you make the math work? how would you pay for the increase in defense spending? how would you pay for the round of new tax cuts that would be even more expensive than the the defense spending? and when he was asked for ways that he would pay for that in

the budget, he gave two examples. first, he would repeal obama care. repealing obama care would actually add more than $100 billion to the deficit. that would not make things better, it would make things worse. so mitt romney will cut the deficit by doing something that will add to the deficit. the other thing he brought up, pbs. the only specific that mitt romney gave in terms of how he will cut the deficit. the only detail he provided was that he would eliminate 1/100th of 1% of the budget. there have been lots of attempts to put the number in sper perspective. here's more. >> the federal share of the corporation for public broadcasting is about $450 million this year. that $450 million is about what the pentagon spends every six hours. >> six hours. to be clear, mr. romney and mr. ryan's idea for the deficit to

save the country from fiscal disaster and pay for the stuff they want to do that's really expensive, their plan is to eliminate six hour's worth of defense spending. one-fourth of one day's worth of defense spending. at the same time, to make overall defense spending go like this. because, you know, they are the numbers guys. math. measure the growth of chn by the way they clean themselves in the bathroom. try charmin ultra strong. with a new duraclean texture, it helps you get clean. plus it's four times stronger than the leading value brand. and you can use up to four times less. charmin ultra strong. [ male announcer ] it started long ago. the joy of giving something everything you've got.

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i just find it troubling that the president's message -- the president's focus -- 28 days from election day is big bird. >> these are tough times with real serious issues. you have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving big bird. >> dudes, you're the one who brought it up. when asked at the presidential debate how you'd cut enough out of the federal budget to accommodate the trillions of dollars in new spending and tax cuts that you say you are planning, you are the one who brought up big bird by name. if you did not intend for that to be your answer, if you be had a better answer, you should have used it. but now you're troubled by people talking about big bird? joining us is e.j. dionne, author of "our divided political

heart." e.j., thanks for being here. >> good to be with you. >> people are focused on how the first debate went. the big bird detail is a strange detail. it seemed like it was going to a pop culture reference. it's turned into a larger thing. is that the line from the debate that people are quoting back to you? >> people aren't quoting that back to me. moderately or disheartened obama supporters who wish it would have gone better. the big bird line is effective against romney if you put it in the context you put it in. that it's 1/100th of 1% of the budget. but the fact that we're focusing on that underscores the things that weren't picked up in what romney said. in preparing for this show, i

notice the something i hadn't noticed before. romney said in the debate, i'm not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. that's exactly what george w. bush said in the 2000 debate. you can cut rich people's taxes by a whole lot of money and still have them pay the same share of the total. so that's what he was really saying. he said he's going to cut everybody's taxes by 20%. and then he said in the debate, we're not going to have tax cuts that add to the deficit. if this is math, it's math on meth. it just doesn't add up at all. and i think that's the issue that has to be raised over and over again. and then big bird is really a good illustration of how, in addition to the tax cuts and military spending, all he talks about is big bird and has to be turned on him. >> in termsover the way the president tried to make that case during the first debate,

that's what the president returned to over and over and over again e. that's why he kept saying $5 trillion in defense spending and how expensive the tax cuts were going to be. the president was trying to make that case but wasn't able to connect with it. is there a way that he -- in your view, he to trying to make that case about the bad math here but doing it in a way that will stick better? >> well, you know they were doing it in their campaign and in the commercials which is you can't make any of this add up unless you cut an awful lot of very popular deductions. and that you've got to force romney and ryan, and i hope by den does this, to say what deductions will you get rid of. my colleague had a great analogy. he said it's as if mitt romney said i'm going to drive from washington, d.c. to california in 15 hours.

that means you'll have to go 2 hundred miles an hour and romney said i'm not going to break the law. then how do you square the numbers? you've got to throw the math word back at them maybe with the pretty colors if you want. >> do you expect joe biden to be able to make that point or to do anything else that's going to significantly change the democrats' process. >> i do have high hopes for biden. i watched the debates in the 2007-2008 campaign and biden beat both hillary clinton and barack obama in a number of debates. everybody talks about his gaffes and they forget he is a good debatetor and he has a capacity for empathy for average people. and he can just explain stuff quite well. so i think he will put ryan on the griddle and take the interview with chris wallace and say look, you've got time.

you said the math is too complicated. don't give us talk about base lines. tell us how you're going to do this. >> e.j., thanks for being here. i appreciate it. >> good to be with you. up next, the grave international implications of having people in our american congress who hold elaborate conspiracy theories about dinosaur farts. sorry. that's next. seriously. tridion safety cell which can withstand over three and a half tons. small in size. big on safety. which can withstand over three and a half tons. if we want to improve our schools... ...what should we invest in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ...nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education.

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with the blackish-blue frame and the white dots and the splattered paint pattern, your lights are on. what? [ male announcer ] the endlessly customizable 2013 smart. this time every year it's the same good news, bad news, high-low kind of feeling. it's the day we learn there are super smart people in the world winning prizes for their super smartness and most of the time we also learn we are not smart enough to get what they are wivening for. this year it's a french and american physicist who won the price in physics to won can

enable scientists to direct le observe some of the business ard effects like the subatamic an log of cats who are alive and dead at the same time predicted by the quantum laws -- in between cats make clocks more accurate. here's the nobel committee explaining it. >> this year's nobel prize in physics is about interaction between light and matter for groundbreaking experimental medicine adds for enabling quantum systems. >> okay. when you take cats who are alive and dead at the same time out of the equation, that explanation is closer to graspable. and that is one level in science going on in the world being recognized right now. here is another. >> i've gom to understand that all the stuff i was taught about

evolution and em breeology, and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hill. and it's lies to try to keep me that from understanding that they need a savor. that's paul broun. the republican leadership put him on the committee that is responsible for science. science, space and technology. >> i've come to understand that all that stuff i was taught about evolution and embryology and big bang theory t is lies straight from the pit of hell and it's lies to try and keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. you see, there are a lot of

scientific data that i found out as a scientist that actually showed that this is really a young earth. i don't believe that the earth's but been 9,000 years old. i believe it was created in six days as we know them. that's what the bible says. and that's the reason as your congressman i hold the holy bible as being the major directions to me of how i vote in washington, d.c. and i'll continue to do that. >> this is a person who is actively involved in shaping science policy in america. congressman broun's office responded. he was speaking off the record to a church group about his personal believes regarding religious issues. but what you heard the congressman say there was those believes are determinative of how he votes in washington as a congressman.

salon.com had a nice feature on this today on who else are on the science committee. there's missouri congressman tod akin. >> if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut the whole thing down. >> he's not just running for senate in missouri, in the meantime while he's doing that, house republicans have assigned him to make federal u.s. policy concerning science. also on the science committee, maryland republican roscoe part let who assessed that rape really doesn't get you pregnant, almost never. also on the science committee for the republicans is texas republican randy response or of house resolution 254 which sought to ease the drought in america through prayer. and for the win, there's california congressman who once suggested that the earth's temperature fluctuated millions of years ago because of dinosaurs